All too much - almost

I make mention on my other blog of not needing to look for the best diet pills on the market even though I seem to have put on weight as a result of my recent(pre- and post-op) inability to exercise as much as usual, or even to walk at a reasonable pace. Thank goodness I'm now (literally) back on my feet and (generally) walking at my old (near-frenetic) speed. In fact, it was only today that I realised I'm no longer conking out at work from tiredness, or having to come home and have a lie-down from exhaustion. So I am making progress. (Though not with my overexcessive use of brackets.)
We've had time off rehearsals for the play this week; there's another play on at the theatre, so rehearsals are out. But next week we're back into it with a vengeance, and I'm trying my best to have my Act II lines under my belt before we start rehearsing that section. As in Act One, I only have one scene, but this one is a two-hander with one of the other cast members, and goes on for about five pages. I've taken it in sections, so as to get a handle on it, and have been practicing tonight with my son reading the other part. But it's still not all there. And it doesn't help that in this scene the character is somewhat drunk and tends to repeat himself. I learnt the worst bit of repetition first, since I thought it would take longest to get into the brain, and I was right...
Meanwhile, our church is getting back into short dramas - they're to accompany a special series of sermons. I was at the brainstorming session last night, and somehow wound up with a part. Not just a short bit in one short drama; the characters in these dramas will appear fairly regularly throughout several weeks of plays. Of course the first drama will be on within a few weeks, while the rehearsals for the other play are still going, and as well I'll be trying to get my head around the Varsity work (which, thank goodness, finishes the week after the main play).
I tried to get them to cast someone else in the role they were suggesting for me, but it looks as though that may not be a goer. However, there's a suggestion that they'll avoid having me in the drama that goes on the day after we start performances of the main play! I should think so, too. Who do they think I am? Laurence Olivier?
Kind of apropos of what I've just been talking about, it's curious how rehearsing in a particular place seems to embue that place with some kind of residual emotional feeling. Every time we've spent several weeks rehearsing in a particular building, I can't pass the place by without feeling a kind of nostalgia. And when I first appeared in the Narnia series of plays, which were performed in the same auditorium in which we had church at that time, I used to find that whenever I passed the dressing rooms I'd get all emotional. Weird.
Check out some photos from that first production - I'm playing Mr Beaver and appear in the first and third photos.